Swiss Justice Minister Decides That ISPs Should Have To Retain Data Despite No Legal Basis

from the well-that's-one-way-to-do-things dept

There are big debates in both the US and Europe about the reasonableness and legality of requiring massive data retention by ISPs. However in Switzerland, the Justice Minister, Simonetta Sommaruga, has decided to dispense with all of that and has just told ISPs they have to start retaining all sorts of data even if there's no direct reason for it (link is a Google translation from the original French). Apparently various companies are now protesting this, but it takes a special sort of out of touch politician to simply declare such a thing without realizing the widespread legal debates in other countries about the legality and usefulness of this very thing...

It is about massive data retention : All data that goes to or from a swiss Internet connection must be logged, so when (if) a future investigation require the data, it can be accessed.

The big problem is, however, that Simonetta Somarunga didn't asked for the stakeholder's opinion and review (ISP, consumer protection societies, experts...) and that that the decision will not be voted by the population, as normally done when modifying the law because it was passed as an ordinance. In facts, the modification was only an update of the ordinance, which already had some dispositions for post and telephone.

The furtive manner of passing this ordinance and the fact that it is not easily fought by consumers and ISP had raised some protests.

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Thanks for the clarification. I don't understand the exact meaning of "ordinance" in this context. Is this a law that was preceded by a parliamentary vote or just some kind of regulation? (this can make a big difference when determining whether this is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights)

Surely "all data" cannot be logged, so I assume that you are talking about traffic data. It would be interesting to see this aspect being compared to the EU data retention directive.

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I'm not really sure about which data will be logged, I assume it is traffic data.

In Switzerland, an ordinance is a law written by the Federal Council, in areas where it is competent to do so (because of federal laws or constitutional). This generally rules of application (execution) of federal laws. (Wikipedia [fr])
In contrast with the law, the ordinance does not require a vote from the population in order to be implemented.

Legal basis, HA! We don't need no stinking legal basis.

I'm telling you people, you're living in the 20th century. There's still a slim pretense of gov'ts obeying laws, but less every day.

Switzerland is not the bastion of freedom that particularly Americans think: headquarters of international banking, those secret accounts enable much skullduggery around the world besides artificially inflate the touted Swiss prosperity, and the political climate is close to a rigid German model. There's a myth that the Nazis passed it by because every Swiss has an automatic rifle, but in fact, Switzerland was USEFUL to Nazis as destination for stolen gold, and it's still HIGHLY useful to globalists and spy agencies as a way to invisibly transfer bribes.

Good girl

The last few years, Switzerland has been trying hard to be the good girl in the gang: economy, financial activities, policing and of course military cooperation, to name the essential ones, are all domains in which integration with EU-US aka. NATO has been on the agenda. A month ago or so, this has even stretched to Switzerland obeying Israel's injunction to stop visitors to Palestina from flying. So we shouldn't be all too surprised if this pattern now extends to so-called security.

If the growing political/free speech censorship we are witnessing on the European internet – under all kinds of pretexts: copyright infringement or the specious interpretation of diffamation laws – now extends to Switzerland, it might be interesting to watch what will happen with those activists and bloggers (Beppe Grillo is one name that stands out) who either are hosted or have declared their intention to be hosted on Swiss servers.